


watch

by lejf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Possessive Sam, Sharing a Bed, and Dean might be a little less oblivious than he seems, and stuff, but sam goes full, honestly pretty sappy, nothing untoward actually happens, someone's perving on dean okay yeah sure, they're y'know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8736124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/lejf
Summary: Sam and Dean are left in a less-than-savoury home for a few days.





	

The “house” John left them at was old and dilapidated, pieced together with corrugated iron and filled with at least seven other people who Sam swore were stoned out of their minds half the time. The Impala — and heads had followed the car, marking the people inside — had paused in the middle of the road and their father’d leaned over, said, “Take your bags, boys. I’ll be back by the week’s end.”

They had, and now Dean was guiding Sam up narrow, claustrophobic stairs with a water-stained ceiling that looked like it’d been cut right out of a prison. They were sharing a room and bed because there was no more space in the goddamn place, though even if there _had_ been, they would’ve done the same. Wouldn't have let each other out of their sight. Not here.

They spent most of their days out in town, Dean sleeping in the library because there was nothing else to do in the town while Sam went about his final year of school. They bought dinner and tucked it under their jackets and walked back together through streets that got progressively darker where the windows were always shuttered and no children were out to play. “Their” own yard was scruffy, untamed and filled with rubble; someone was sitting by one of the side walls, hidden in shadow, gnawing on their bony wrist. Sam thought John should’ve stayed here to hunt. He would’ve found monsters aplenty.

Dean walked ahead of him by just one step. It was a conscious pattern they’d fallen into, even when footpaths were wide enough to fit them side-by-side. Maybe it was borne from Dean’s desire to spring traps first. Maybe it was so that he didn’t have to see Sam so much in his peripherals. Maybe it was because Sam felt more comfortable when unobserved by Dean; not unprotected, just... unobserved. Unscrutinised.

It could’ve been anything. But sometimes when they walked, they turned towards each other, facing each other just slightly — and it was in those moments that Sam was sure it was because walking side-by-side meant only their shoulders were close.

Today Dean wasn’t watching. Dean was just walking in front, and Sam saw _him._

There was a fence that wrapped around the property, moss-blemished and broken in places, crooked as dead man’s teeth and patched together with scraps. It was in one of those breaks in the wooden portions that Sam saw him. An eyeball was turning in its socket to follow Dean to the door, and a hand was crawling through the gap.

Sam did not say anything. He followed Dean dutifully up the concrete stairs and into their cramped room without a word, locking the door behind them and then barring it with the bed. There were no windows, which Sam was grateful for, and they sat together on the threadbare mattress digging into their takeaway dinner that was still a little warm.

They were both used to having to hold their bladders on long car trips, so there were no issues with needing the bathroom. Outside they could hear yelling, grunting, bottles smashing. Still in their clothes of the day, they curled up together on one side of the bed, the one by the wall and not the door, because if the door was broken down they didn’t want to get crushed.

There was a guilty, primitive pleasure in sleeping intertwined with Dean, regardless of who had their arms around each other. Dean promised comfort, and nowhere else in the world — even in this ramshackle place with voices wailing outside — did he feel safer than with Dean. The absolute darkness meant that Sam’s world shrunk down to the awareness of Dean’s warmth against his and the steady rise and fall of Dean’s chest, every exhale of his breath.

As if his world wasn’t there already.

He felt so, so, grateful, in that moment, that he’d even been _born_ with Dean, smiled at Dean, grown with him until it was more their life than his. Who else would Dean so effortlessly cradle? Who else would Dean always be _aware_ of, proud of, loving of?

Sam was not sure of his place in the world — he was not sure of much, actually: what his future would be, where he would go, when he would die, what he wanted to die doing — but the one thing he was sure of was that he loved Dean.

At that, Dean let out a loud, rasping snore; so Sam left a kiss on his nose, gently, in dark where no one could see.

*

The next morning when Dean was still groggy and Sam changed crouched in front of their duffels, he slipped an extra switchblade into his back pocket. Then he crawled back in with Dean, feeling a warm hand raise automatically to pat his back.

Sam smiled into the crook of Dean’s neck. “Get up,” he said. Dean was stretching and yawning a moment later, trying to work the kinks out of his back, unfolding himself from the bed. In one shameless, fluid movement, he pulled his shirt over his head and Sam looked away, at the wall, pretending he wanted to lie down to rest a little longer.

The zipper of Dean’s jeans went. So did his duffle. Sam couldn’t help but glance — and oh, Dean’s back, his bare shoulders — and immediately blush, maybe harden in his boxers a little, knowing Dean was naked right there. Somehow, although they had shared rooms countless times, it never failed to fluster Sam.

Sam had just willed away most of his unwelcome response when the mattress dipped and Dean was giving his shoulder a familiar jostle under a familiar palm.

Sam’s school supplies were by the door. No bag: He left out the books he didn’t need while Dean pushed the bed away from the door, then they left, crunching over green glass broken on the stairs. The place was different in the mornings. Pallid, a little. Pale, downtrodden, more like a maggot that had turned its belly up to the sun for the birds to feed. Someone was picking through the rubble on the lawn, muttering to themselves, looking more pitiful than those animals people left on the sides of roads.

He could feel the eye following Dean, again. Dean, with his pillowed lips and eyelashes. ‘Effeminate’. Sam said nothing, but disgust was pressing at the back of his throat. Dean was stronger than anybody he knew.

So was Sam.

Period three, Sam skipped class. He walked home, alone, looking around as if searching for Dean. He stopped outside their place of stay, their temporary cage, looking around. There was a man and woman sprawled out by one of the side walls, half-undressed, the man grunting, his head bowed.

The eye was watching them. Sam hugged the fence, his heart darker than the shadows that clung to the rusted iron.

The couple was growing enthusiastic. The woman flung her head back, howling. Sam stepped forwards, pulled his knife out, plunged. Warmth gushed over his fingers and a terrible shriek drowned out the couple, but Sam had no eyes for them. He crashed through the remainder of the fence, wood splintering around him and _there was the man_ , terrible and pitiful in his hunched pose, clutching at his bleeding eye, trousers pooled and tangled in his feet, his cock softening by the instant. He screamed, “What the fuck?! You’re fucking crazy, you–”

Sam smashed his head against the earth, and he snarled _,_ “ _You don’t look at him, you hear me?”_

“Fuck!” the man yelped back. “You’re fucking insane, man! What’s a little harmless peeping gonna do?”

“Were you thinking about it?” Sam demanded, pressing the knife to his throat. “ _Taking_ him? As if you could _ever_ see past his pretty face?”

The man just whimpered. “No,” he said, shaking his head infinitesimally. Maybe he was just shaking. “No, no, no, I didn’t, I swear–”

“Liar,” Sam breathed. He shoved the man away, disgusted, pulse beating heavy and fast and loud in the cavern of his chest. The man just curled up where he was and started to sob. Huge, frame-wrenching sobs that smeared the blood everywhere and must’ve stung.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begged, “Please, please, I swear, I’ll never do it again.”

Sam looked down at him, and for a moment it was eerily like looking down at himself: the most broken, twisted part of himself, pitiful and horrid and all about blood and sex and voyeurism and death.

If only it was so easy for _him_ to stop watching Dean.

He shook his head as if he could clear away his revulsion and left to the sound of crying, heart heavier than it’d ever been.

At the very, bitter least, he’d done a good job. Hadn’t even stained his clothes.

*

John made good on his promise and then some. He called the next morning and told them he was pulling up in three hours and that they’d better be ready. Sam was woken by Dean’s warm tones, bleary when Dean tossed the phone into his duffel and eased back beside him.

“We’re gonna be outta here soon,” Dean whispered to him, spreading a palm against the small of Sam’s back and pulling him into his space.

Sam mumbled an acknowledgement into his skin as Dean rubbed soothing circles into his back.

Usually they’d wear their boxers and a shirt to bed. Usually. If they weren’t sharing a bed and tucked up beside each other. These last two days, they’d both worn loose jeans.

Sam couldn’t help but twitch in surprise when Dean’s hand slid down, over the curve of his ass– and slipped into his pocket.

Switchblade. Hadn’t had an opportunity to take it out the night before.

“You don’t need this,” Dean said, lips brushing his ear, and it clattered across the floor where Dean tossed it.

“Dean–”

“ _I’ll_ protect you,” Dean said, more heat in his tone.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut. That wasn’t what the switchblade was for. No, it was a punishment for _himself_ , because Dean drew in every eye they came by and because _Sam_ had never guarded _Dean_ well enough.

But maybe it was alright, and maybe Dean _did_ understand — because Sam was always in his peripherals and because Sam would die for Dean and Dean would die for Sam and because they walked turned inwards towards each other with a shared secret stringing the space between. All the places in the world they could choose to go and instead they picked the spots right by each other's hearts.

Two jagged ends coming home.

Dean kissed him on the nose. Sam tensed under his hands, nerves suddenly frozen through with ice — _he'd_ _been_ _awake,_ _of course_ — but Dean thawed him with murmurs of comforts and a wicked smile that carried a thousand promises on its own.

 

They could lie in a little while longer. John would only be another three hours.

**Author's Note:**

> did you notice? “brother” count: 0.
> 
>  
> 
> isn’t it ridiculous how you write about these guys loving each other so much that you fall in love with them too? not in the traditional sense, of course. you don’t want them to take you home and wine and dine you and marry you. 
> 
> ever missed a world so bad once you finished its stories? yeah. me too. we’ll never get them back again.


End file.
